History of the Luggage

Packagemaker.app makes it nearly impossible to have someone review the changes you've made in a package. They have to rummage through screen after screen, hoping that they remember the previous settings and that they don't accidentally make an unwanted change. At Google, I wrote an internal tool using Make that allowed the other members of my group to easily review package changes - every package is generated by a Makefile. Since Makefiles are text, the diffs were easily presented in the internal code review tool. We made a lot of packages for use with puppet and InstaDMG using that tool, and after I left Google, I wanted to have a similar tool available, so I wrote the Luggage.

What the Luggage provides

Easy repackaging of GUI apps that don't come with Apple pkg installers, custom scripts and configuration files, payload-less packages that do settings changes on target machines in their postflight/postupdate scripts. These packages are easily used in InstaDMG to create master disk images for deployment, or system management systems like puppet to distribute new software to managed Macintoshes.

How it works

You create a Makefile describing where you want each file in the package to end up on the target machines. luggage.make includes rules that will generate a package root with appropriate permissions, copy the files into place, create a package version-stamped with the date, then wrap the package in a disk image file.

So how do I use it?

Requirements for all Makefiles

Every package makefile must include luggage.make, specify a title for the package, a base reversed domain for creating the package id, and the payload listing which files we want installed by the package. Include luggage.make before your variable declarations so your declarations override the internal ones in luggage.make. Please note that TITLE must not include spaces - it's going to be used as part of the package id. Also remember to include luggage.make before any of your definitions so your definitions override the defaults.

include /usr/local/share/luggage/luggage.make

TITLE=install_foo

REVERSE_DOMAIN=com.example.corp

PAYLOAD=

Creating a package for a GUI Application

For our first example, we're going to repackage a GUI application that didn't come with a PKG installer. First, tar up the application (making sure to use Apple's tar so resource forks don't get mangled) with /usr/bin/tar cvj Foo.app.tar.bz Foo.app, then update PAYLOAD with

PAYLOAD=unbz2-applications-foo.app

This tells luggage.make that we want Foo.app.tar.bz2 untarred into /Applications. If we want it installed in /Applications/Utilities instead, we'd use unbz2-utilities-foo.app instead, Now we can create a package with "make pkg", or have it automatically wrapped in a disk image with "make dmg". That's all it takes.

Packaging scripts and configuration files

Similarly, if you want to install bar as /usr/local/bin/bar, add pack-usr-local-bin-bar to PAYLOAD.

Available PAYLOAD additions

Rule

Ownership

Permissions

Destination

pack-etc-foo

root:wheel

644

/etc/foo

pack-usr-bin-foo

root:wheel

755

/usr/bin/foo

pack-usr-sbin-foo

root:wheel

755

/usr/sbin/foo

pack-usr-local-bin-foo

root:wheel

755

/usr/local/bin/foo

pack-usr-local-sbin-foo

root:wheel

755

/usr/local/sbin/foo

pack-hookscript-foo

root:wheel

755

/etc/hooks/foo

pack-Library-LaunchAgents-foo

root:wheel

644

/Library/LaunchAgents/foo

pack-Library-LaunchDaemons-foo

root:wheel

644

/Library/LaunchDaemons/foo

pack-Library-Preferences-foo

root:admin

644

/Library/Preferences/foo

pack-ppd-foo

root:admin

644

/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/foo

pack-user-template-plist-foo

root:wheel

644

/System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj/Library/Preferences/foo

unbz2-applications-foo

root:admin

based on tarball contents

/Applications/Foo

ungz-applications-foo

root:admin

based on tarball contents

/Applications/Foo

unbz2-utilities-foo

root:admin

based on tarball contents

/Applications/Utilities/Foo

ungz-utilities-foo

root:admin

based on tarball contents

/Applications/Utilities/Foo

Adding preflight/postflight/postinstall/postupdate scripts

Name the script preflight, postflight, postinstall, or postupdate, then add pack-script-XX to PAYLOAD and it will automatically be added to the final package.

Make targets

make dmg - create a package, then wrap it in a dmg. Result will be in the current directory.

make pkg - create a package and copy it into the current directory

make pkgls - create a package, then list the contents so you can confirm it's generating a package with a payload that matches what you're expecting.

Customizing your packages

How do I add a file to my package that is installed somewhere luggage.make doesn't cover?

luggage.make defines several convenience targets that create various directory paths within the package root. You can use them to create the parent directory for your target location, then create your target location. Here's an example that creates /etc/cups so you can install a custom cupsd.conf

l_cups: l_etc

@sudo mkdir ${WORK_D}/etc/cups

@sudo chown root:_lp ${WORK_D}/etc/cups

@sudo chmod 755 ${WORK_D}/etc/cups

pack-cupsd.conf: l_cups

@sudo ${CP} cupsd.conf ${WORK_D}/etc/cups

@sudo chown root:_lp ${WORK_D}/etc/cups/cupsd.conf

@sudo chmod 644 ${WORK_D}/etc/cups/cupsd.conf

Now all you need to do is add pack-cupsd.conf to your PAYLOAD variable, and make will create /etc/cups in your package root, change the permissions and ownership, then copy in your cupsd.conf.

I need to install foo with permissions different from the defaults luggage.make uses. How do I change the ownership/permissions for files installed using luggage.make?

You could make your changes using a postflight script, but for convenience, luggage.make runs make modify_packageroot after it has created the package root and copied the install files there, but before it invokes packagemaker's command line tool to create the package.

If you add that target to your package's Makefile, it will override the dummy one in luggage.make and let you change the permissions of files in your package root. ${WORK_D} contains the path to your package root. For example, if your package installed a modified cupsd.conf to /etc/cups, and you needed it to have a group of _lp, you would add the following to your package Makefile:

modify_packageroot:

@sudo chgrp _lp ${WORK_D}/etc/cups/cupsd.conf

I don't want the package version to be based on the current date. How can I force it to something specific?

By default, luggage.make sets the version number to YYYYMMDD. If you prefer to set it to something specific, set PACKAGE_VERSION=something_numeric.

FAQ

My makefile looks ok, but I get an error about a missing separator

You've probably indented your rules with spaces rather than a tab. Make requires the indentation be with tabs.